Justin Sitner from Unrestrained/Stuck in the Past

Justin Sitner is a guy I came into contact with a couple of years back when the Great Reversals 10” came out. I was trying to find as many avenues as possible to promote the record and I figured the blog he co-runs (Stuck in the Past) might be willing to check it out and maybe give us a mention. Thankfully, not only did they give us a few mentions, Justin wound up offering to trade me some stuff from his band Unrestrained and we’ve kept in touch ever since.

It’s funny how sometimes you find people whose experience parallels yours so closely….hearing Justin talk about how he started discovering hardcore, what bands first blew him away, what tours came through his town, a lot of it was EXACTLY like my experience, even though he lives on the other side of the country. Even now, Unrestrained and Stuck in the Past both celebrate the sound and spirit of the 90’s scene, which is still my favorite era or flavor of hardcore so to speak.

What I came to appreciate about Justin even more through the process of doing this interview was how thoughtful and honest he is. As you’re about to see, his last several years have not been easy to say the least. The willingness to open yourself up is one of the things that I’ve always felt separates hardcore from a lot of other music, and Justin definitely does so here.

Without further ado……  

I'm always curious to hear about people's backgrounds, so talk a little bit about your childhood, your family, and the path that eventually led you to the core.

My parents were both fairly young when I was born, and I grew up in outer SE Portland, which at the time, could only be described as a lower-middle/working class area. It was never a spectacular area while I was growing up, but it has become much worse over the years with crime of various sorts. The household I grew up in was always loving and encouraging. Music played a large part as well, as my Dad was (and still is) a nut for his vinyl, and he has rather eclectic taste, so I got to hear a very wide range of sounds.

Hard rock is what first struck me, and that put me deep into bands like AC/DC (the first concert I ever went to was AC/DC with my parents), Angel City, Thin Lizzy, etc. But, when I was 12, I discovered my dad's Sex Pistols album. The heinous colors on the cover first drew me in, but the sheer ugliness of what I heard when I put it on the turntable is what hooked me. I had never heard anything quite like it.

I have an Uncle that's only 11 years older than I am, and he had me listening to lots of metal at a very young age with our cousin that played in some local bands. The memories are still pretty vivid of hearing “Ride the Lightning” with them shortly after it was released. The idea of "crossover" was completely alien to me at the time, though, so I just thought I was an odd kid treading the line between metal and punk as I dove head first into the world of punk rock after finding that Sex Pistols album.

It was easy to find the Ramones and The Clash, but it was an issue of Guitar World that first told me about hardcore. This particular issue listed the top 25 albums from a wide array of genres, but on one page behind the top 25 punk albums, they listed the top 10 hardcore albums. They lead the list off by describing hardcore as "the ugly bastard son of punk” or something to that effect. That same week, I picked up Minor Threat and Black Flag. I also quickly discovered Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and Punk Planet at the Tower Records I used to make my mom take me to all the time.

This was still just a little while before I discovered the incredibly great independent record stores of Portland, so I was getting all of my information from these widely distributed zines, and mail-ordering records/CDs from bands I had never heard of just as long as they had a decent review. It wasn't long before I was ordering Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today from the Revelation Records ad in MRR, and those records were the first time I started utilizing thank you lists to discover new bands.

Soon after that I made the next generational jump, and started getting releases from Victory Records, but this was a bit different, because I finally felt like I was dealing with people my own age. At this point, I was just devouring everything I could get my hands on. The metal heads at my school didn't listen to much of anything deeper than Pantera, and the few punk friends I had didn't seem to have any interest in hardcore, so it wasn't until I started going to shows around 1994 that I really started to feel at home.

It's cool to hear talk about how scouring thank you lists and thumbing through mainstream magazines were among your bridges to the underground because that's definitely the exact same way it happened for me. Obviously for young kids coming up now the web has changed everything with so many new bands being at people's fingertips. What would you say has been gained and lost as the subculture has primarily shifted from physical to digital mediums?

There are so many negative and positive aspects to the digital age of hardcore, and I'm not sure if it all balances out or not. On one hand, I want to like that it's easier for kids to discover hardcore, but on the other hand, I think that having such free and easy access to hardcore also has created a crop of kids who can drop out of hardcore just as easily as they got into it. The amount of cool kids in hardcore has grown, because you no longer have to hang out on the fringes and be a weirdo outcast to obtain a portion of this subculture. No longer needing a tangible, physical copy of a band's output could have something to do with it too. Mp3s are unmemorable, and easily discarded with the click of a mouse. Physical artwork, lyric sheets and thank you lists give you a far more intimate understanding of a band, and where they're coming from with the music contained on the album. The newer generations have spawned some great kids and great bands, but I don’t think they will have nearly as many lifers as previous generations of hardcore.

You took us up to 94' in your personal history....once you were fully engrossed in the scene what bands became most important for you not just musically, but also in terms of ethics, politics, etc.?

I was going to lots of punk and Fat Wreck/Epitaph shows at first, but the first real hardcore band that really struck a nerve with me live was Sick of It All. They were completely unrelenting, and delivered something that seemed far more intense than most of the shows I was going to prior to seeing them. I was always bummed out to find out that I had missed the Born Against/Rorschach/Downcast show in Portland by a little over a year, but in general, Portland got skipped over a lot in the 90s by touring hardcore bands. Granted, there wasn't a thriving scene for what some would call "new school" hardcore bands here, so a lot of bands toured as if Oregon didn't even exist. The likes of Unbroken, Undertow, Chokehold, Mouthpiece, etc. would all go directly from Seattle down to California, or vice versa. This was also happening before I was old enough to drive, so I didn't have the means of getting to these shows, let alone finding out about half of them.

Along with Sick of It All, Earth Crisis started coming around in the mid 90s a lot. I saw them for the first time in '96 with Damnation AD, and both of those bands blew me away. Having been into punk and thrash metal, the political aspect of 90s hardcore greatly appealed to me, and Trial really struck a chord with me. They had started to play Portland a lot by '97, and they were exposing me to lots of political ideas that I hadn't considered before. I loved bands like Aus Rotten, but somehow, Trial made it all feel more real to me. Being able to see them play on a monthly basis surely helped that as well, as did becoming friends with the guys in the band, but the thoughts embedded in their music lit a fire in my teenage self.

I've asked this question to a couple of other people as well, but on the whole, hardcore and punk are definitely way less politicized and socially aware now (at least in the U.S.) than they were 15-20 years ago. I'm curious to get your thoughts on why you think things have evolved in that direction and if you see any way of putting that more activist-oriented approach back at the forefront of today's scene.

That's a tough one, but I think it might have a lot to do with the question you asked earlier about the internet's role in hardcore. The kids who aren't weirdoes and outcasts probably just aren't going to give much of a shit about the political rants of someone on stage. There's a much bigger sense of "less talk, more rock" these days, and those kids that didn't want to hear about social or political issues in the first place have now started bands of their own, so the cycle continues forward. I just get really bored with incredibly generic lyrics. Bands sound angry today, but when I read the lyrics, I have no clue what the hell they're so angry about. Maybe the teenage worker at Subway didn't put enough cheese on their sandwich.

However, I do not think that all bands need to have a socio-political message. I am just as happy seeing someone exorcise their personal demons through music. Seeing someone that's just as odd or messed up as I am work through things in their life that they probably never thought they would expose is liberating from both sides of the mic. I just want authenticity, and I become especially demanding of  it when it comes to hardcore.

Let's delve into Stuck in the Past a little bit. For starters, how did you and Chip get to know each other, and who had the idea to start the webzine?

I'm pretty sure that Chip and I actually first came into contact with one another via Soulseek many years ago. We live on opposite sides of the country, so we never got in touch in some other form during the 90s heyday, but in the early 2000s, we became acquainted through our love of 90s hardcore, and have become great friends since then. Around 2006, my wife was working nights, and I was bored out of my skull, so I started a blog called x43x where I would rip out of print records/tapes, and upload them. Although it was heavily 90s hardcore oriented, I was also dipping into black metal and punk. Chip had initially started Stuck In The Past as a blog for him to post about his insane shirt collection, and then he asked if I would like to join forces with him. It seemed like a good idea to me, and things just really took off from there rather quickly. We've gained and lost a few other contributors over the years, but I think we have a pretty good team right now.

In terms of your approach, would you say the goal is more to dig up long-lost treasures for old guys like us, or to hopefully turn some younger kids on to bands that laid the foundation for things today?

While I would say that it's a pretty even mixture of both, those two end results both come about from the notion that we want this music to be preserved for the digital age. Primarily, I'm an analog enthusiast, but the convenience of mp3s has become a part of my life as well, and I tend to listen to them through my phone while at work. Combine that with the fact that a lot of these releases were pressed in limited quantities 15 or 20 years ago, and I think it becomes necessary for them to be digitized, so that they can continue to have a presence for years to come. My formative teenage years happened in the 90s, and the hardcore scene of that time had a profound influence on me, so there's also a desire to want to make sure that a newer generation at least has the opportunity to hear even some of the most obscure bands from that era that were still filled interesting thoughts and passion.

For you personally, what would you say is your favorite link, story, or feature that you guys have been able to do?

There have been lots of great features over the years, but some of my favorites have been the Brotherhood soundboard/rehearsal recordings, the Dave Walker interview, the recently unearthed unreleased track from Bloodlet and of course, Sergeant D's 'Five Things I Miss About 90s Hardcore' guest post. The real beauty of the blog is how incredibly forthcoming members of the old bands have been. We often get contacted by them, and get rare stuff offered to us, which is phenomenal. I've even had multiple readers send me their old boxes of tapes that they don't listen to anymore, so I can convert them, and get them online. I have a nice backlog going right now, but I will get to them all, and always welcome more.

Talk a little bit about the formation of Unrestrained....how long had you known the other dudes, and what were you guys hoping to do that was perhaps different from your past musical endeavors?

When we first started Unrestrained at the tail end of 2006, we all had other bands that had recently broken up, and having known each other for quite a few years, there was just a heavy desire to start a new band involving all of us. Given how long the core of us had known each other, we set out to create a band that was reminiscent of the scene that was around when we all first started going to shows, which was the mid 90s. We never have tried to emulate any particular bands, but I think we just carry that vibe of the 90s rather heavily. We've had some lineup changes over the years, but the current lineup has been in place since late 2010, and I'm incredibly pleased with it. Things just seem to naturally work themselves out for us, and we don't find ourselves having to force any songs to come together.

You've released a number of 7 inches, splits, comp tracks, etc. over the years and are about to release your first full-length "Forward Onto Death" in a couple months here. My band is somewhat similar in that we've only written and released songs in small chunks; the idea of writing an LP has always seemed really daunting and intimidating. How did you guys approach it, and what was the process like as compared to doing just a few songs at a time?

We're a band made up of mostly 30 - 40 years olds (except Ryan, who keeps us young), so the writing process always moves a bit slowly for us. With wives/kids/careers/school, we normally get to practice once a week, at best, while everyone is actually in town at the same time. That being said, this full length actually came together in chunks, much like how our writing has gone in the past for the 7"s and compilations. I think we've just been pretty good at carrying a certain atmosphere with us throughout our duration, so even though the songs weren't all written in extremely close proximity to one another time wise, the songs on the LP still flow nicely with one another in the sequencing. We have talked about writing a fully conceptualized full length, though, and perhaps that will come sometime in the near future, but we're leaving ourselves pretty wide open for any other ventures like splits to come our way as well.

So lyrically the subject matter on the new record is fairly downcast across the board. In "Ophelia" you paint a picture of a world where humanity has pushed us to the verge.....of collapse, of calamity.....I haven't read Derek Jensen but I saw him speak once and the lyrics had a little bit of that feel. What do you foresee and what informed your thoughts as you were writing that song?

For as long as I can remember, I have never been the 'half glass full' type of person. I've always been a pessimist, and I think that greatly feeds into my outlook on the future of humanity. It's impossible to go more than a day or two without seeing a news story about some form of tragedy that is the direct result of someone's selfishness, and I think that's what fed the direction of “Ophelia” lyrically. Human selfishness is going to bring about the end of humanity, and potentially this entire planet long before any natural disaster can beat us to it. Megalomaniacs that receive power through birthright, and overzealous religious groups are undoubtedly going to be the ones that start the next nuclear war, and I just hope I'm long gone by the time that happens.

Similarly, "Disdain" comments on our crippled national politics. Lyrically it strikes me as really timely considering that in the past week we've seen a woman crash the White House gates with her baby in tow and a man set himself on fire in the capitol, both of which occurred in the context of a government shutdown. It's interesting because in some ways it seems like there are moments of political progress like LGBT rights inching forward ever-so slowly, while at the same time we've got absolute gridlock and a faction of batshit crazy Tea Party types who want to take us back a hundred years both socially and economically. Do you see any hope around the corner for us politically as a nation, and are things any better at the state and local levels in Oregon?

I don't think it's any small secret that the American government is completely bought and sold by large corporations and interest groups. The Koch brothers, and others like them, wield far more power in this country than any select people should ever be able to. We have this two party system that really isn't getting us anywhere anymore, because they both cater to such fringe voices within our nation. I think most people are pretty moderate, but the lunatics to the far right and far left are the ones that are constantly yelling and screaming. Unfortunately, those are the voices being heard, and the divide within the US House and Senate just keeps getting wider and wider.

Oregon is odd when it comes to politics, and that has a lot to do with the population distribution. Thanks to that shit-show Portlandia, lots of people have a very hip view of Portland, and subsequently, they think Oregon follows suit. The valley that stretches from Portland down to Eugene typically is pretty liberal and progressive, but Oregon is a large state, and there is a vast amount of land occupied by conservatives in the rural areas of this state. Local initiatives in the Portland area almost always lean to the left, but statewide initiatives are really a complete tossup. There have been multiple years where anti-gay bills have been struck down, yet gay marriage was also struck down. I never feel very confident about voting for president and national level representatives, but voting on local initiatives has a direct effect. And call me a Pinko all you want, but I think socialized democracy is the way to go.

One of the first times we talked you opened up about you and your wife Carly's struggle to have a child which saw you through multiple miscarriages and has recently culminated in the adoption of your daughter Miles. Much of the new record focuses on that process, none more clearly than "Empty". Not having gone through that particular experience but having had quite a struggle with my first-born, I know first-hand the toll it can take personally as well as on your relationship. So first things first, what was the process for you like personally? Secondly, how were you and Carly able to whether that storm so to speak? Did you find yourselves relying primarily on each other or was there an extended circle of friends and family that served as a support through the process?

“Empty” is a song that was written directly after a miscarriage. It wasn't the first, but it also wasn't the last, and I had just reached a point in the process where I felt completely empty and void, but a large part of me didn't want to feel anymore. I've always been an introvert, and that has manifested itself in many ways over the years. There have been times where people apparently think I'm a dick because I don't go out of my way to talk to them, but I don't fancy myself as better than anyone. I'm just socially awkward, and that usually results in a level of anxiety that leaves me sitting by myself unless someone wants to initiate conversation with me. In conjunction with that, I've become comfortable just sitting with my thoughts, but in retrospect, this was not the time where I should have remained introverted with my thoughts. What we were going through was definitely tearing me up inside, and Carly was always far more open with her feelings than I was. I had this antiquated mindset that she was going through so much that I needed to remain strong and stoic in order to help her. However, it would have helped both of us a lot more if I had been more openly vulnerable. Once I knew that, though, I think I slowly made some strides to be a lot more open about my emotions amidst whatever turmoil was hitting us at the time. Even just answering questions like this is pretty huge for me. I know the lyrics on the new record really kind of set me up for these sorts of questions, though, so I guess this is the head first dive.

So I recently listened to an episode of "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross where she interviewed someone who wrote a book about her experience with adoption where she encountered tons of hurdles, was told she was being given a child only to have that decision reversed, etc. How did you guys come to the point where you decided to pursue adoption and was your experience pretty smooth or were there more bumps along the road?

The choice to adopt was really a natural conclusion t0 the string of miscarriages. Although we didn't have any situations as awful as having an adoption decision reversed, it was still a long, arduous process. Lots of adoption agencies function differently, but our process involved receiving a brief description of a birth-mother and her situation, and we had to choose to show her a short book about ourselves or not. From there, we just had to wait for a decision, which is always an agonizing wait. Sometimes, we weren't shocked to find out we weren't chosen, but there were other times that were harder to take. It was easy to develop an attachment to the idea that we were so similar to the birth-mother based solely on little details in a one sheet, so certain situation stung a little more than others.

Actually, I think the hardest times were when we were told that the choice had been narrowed down to three adoptive families, which included us, but we weren't chosen in the end. Somehow, it just felt more personal to have gotten that deep, and then not been chosen. It was easy to perceive it as a personal rejection. But, after a year and a half, we found a great match, and actually had a really smooth process from there on out.

Now that you've come full circle with the adoption process, how is the transition to parenthood going thus far?

It's incredible, and has actually been a pretty smooth transition. It's funny, because there were lots of people (who don't know me too well) that would tell me things like, "your life is really going to change. You won't be able to go out all the time." Joke's on them, because I don't go out much. I'm a hermit that pokes my head out of the cave every so often to play or attend shows and to play softball once a week in the summer. And it just so happens that my wife is a hermit too, so we're a great match. I love my friends, and I love to see them, but most days, I just want to come home to relax and hangout with my wife, baby and dog.

I've never believed in karma, but maybe the universe is throwing us a bone for all of the hell we went through on our road to having a child, because our baby is the greatest (yes, I'm aware that basically every parent says that). She's incredibly mellow, and generally happy. Her only freak-outs come when she's hungry, or has gone too long without a nap. And for most of her six months on this planet, she has slept straight through the night. But most importantly, she makes me smile, and I miss her incredibly when I'm gone. She's already a lot like my wife in that regard.

For all things Unrestrained, you can head here: http://unrestrained.limitedrun.com/
Go get schooled here kids: http://xstuckinthepastx.blogspot.com/

Also, be on the lookout for Unrestrained's new LP "Forward Unto Death" coming early next year on Trip Machine Laboratories. Pre-orders will be up soon at http://www.tripmachinelabs.com/

Interview with Anthony and Chris from Divider

Chris Tzompanakis is a guy I “met” a long time ago, while he was running an awesome little label called One Day Savior Records. Perhaps best known for his time as the vocalist of Skycamefalling, ODS saw him put out beautifully packaged records from bands that covered a wide spectrum of punk, hardcore, indie, and metal. A few years ago I heard he was going to be fronting a band again, and I instantly got pretty stoked, figuring it would rule. Fast forward a year or so from that point and I got to hear some of the recordings, which completely confirmed my high hopes. Shortly thereafter my best buds in Hollow Earth did an East Coast run where they got to share the stage together…rave reviews of their live show were all I heard for weeks after they got home.  

That summer they did a Midwest run and after ten plus years of communicating with Chris via email, I finally got to meet him in person. He was just as nice as I’d assumed he would be, and Divider was even more massive-sounding than I’d ever imagined, blowing the power out twice within a mere four or five songs.

Needless to say, I consider Divider to be one of the most criminally underrated bands currently making music; truly a diamond in the rough. Melodic without being pretty, crushingly heavy without the embarrassing nu-metal tendencies (cough Xibalba cough), slow and brooding without falling into Nuer-Isis territory, a hardcore band that doesn’t rely for a second on breakdowns, they cannot be pigeonholed; other than to say that they are a bad-ass, insanely loud band.

Anyway, all that underrated, diamond in the rough stuff should be coming to an end early next year when the band will release their new LP via Glory Kid Records, which is already my most-anticipated release of 2014.

For this interview I broke it up into two parts, part one with their guitarist Anthony, who I’ve been getting to know over the past couple years as well, and part two with Chris.

So I'm semi-familiar with Chris's background in the scene via Skycamefalling and One Day Savior, but how did you get involved in punk and hardcore?

I would say my dad was indirectly responsible for me getting into alternative music. When I was around 13 years old, I came home with some dumb Marilyn Manson cd or something. My pops wasn’t mad when he saw it, but he sat me down and explained to me how there are people in boardrooms that are trained to separate my money from my wallet with music like that. I was looking for something else that meant a little more after that. For me though, my first love was Sonic Youth.  That was heavy music for me.  I think I snaked my sisters’ copy of “Dirty” and I was hooked.  I would sit in my garage and try to figure out how they were making some of those sounds. Then the search for new bands started, met people, and then I started playing.

Damn, your dad sounds like a total bad ass! What sort of sounds were you exposed to as a kid and how does your fam feel now about the type of stuff you are playing?

I had a pretty lucky childhood when it came to my family and music.  My mom saw The Beatles at Shea Stadium and Hendrix play the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock.  My dad saw Led Zeppelin and met Jim Morrison at a bar in New York.  So there were plenty of stories.  That music at that period of time was sparked by what was going on in the world.  

There was a war going on and you could have been plucked from your home and sent to fight via the draft. When Hendrix played the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock, he imitated sounds of war within the song. My dad showed me "Ohio" by CSNY and explained how college students were shot and killed by the National Guard.  So at a young age, they showed me how there is a lot more to music than some idiot with colored contact lenses jerking off on a guitar. I don't think we will ever see music like that ever again. 

I came from a very supportive family.  Creativity was encouraged.  So I think my mom is pretty proud of the fact that there is something that I still love like when I was 18.  I think my pops would have probably learned how to play guitar so we could have jammed together or something.

Talk a little bit about the history of the band. Your first LP, "At Twilight" is sonically pretty far removed from where the band is now, and was followed by a 4 year silence (at least in terms of released output). I know there was some re-tooling of the line-up during that period...was the sonic shift an intentional move or just sort of the natural result of new people coming into the fold?

We started playing in 2006.  We wrote an EP pretty quickly and got the chance to record it with someone that we all looked up to.  As soon as we had copies in our hands, we went on tour.  The usual band member shifts happened, but we were still able to play a decent amount, and it was awesome. After some pretty awesome shows and wild tours, a series of unfortunate events took place.  More member shifts.  People quit while on tour.  Had to go to court for the dumbest shit.  So all the fun kind of got sucked out of playing.  We all went our separate ways. 

Fast forward 2 years, we started playing again and wrote another EP.  We played a bunch, but then our singer left to play in a rock band.  I’ll never forget our drummer Vic saying “I know this guy that wants to try out” I was totally spent at that point and figured whatever.  I found out later that Vic’s friend was this guy Chris that sang in some band called Skycamefalling. He really needed to try out.

As far as the sound, I think I knew that this band would evolve as long as it was around.  I never liked the idea of writing the same song 12 different ways.  That shit obviously gets boring and reeks of laziness. So we never sat down and consciously decided to change. When I listen to “At Twilight” though, it still sounds like me.  We usually write a song based on ideas that I bring to everyone that are eventually morphed into full songs as a band.  In a way, the songs write themselves.  I feel like your gut instinct is usually right. What comes naturally is what you subconsciously decide is right.  When you start to try and force things to create a certain feel, that feel is fake.  So I just think the songs grew as we grew.  The songs on “At Twilight” represent who we were and how we felt at that point in time.  Fast forward seven years and we are not the same people in the same situations, so I feel that whatever we are creating now is just an indication of who we are now.

So that guy you "all looked up to" for the early e.p. was Kurt Ballou. When my band recorded with Jay Maas a couple years ago he had some hilarious stories about how brutal Kurt can be in the studio both from recording with him and from being someone he trades tips and gear with. How nervous were you as a young band going with a semi-legendary dude (at least in our circles) and how did that experience compare with working at Studio 4 and recording at your home set up?

We had to email Kurt a demo of one of our songs before he would say yes or no.  I remember hearing back from him and getting the go ahead.  That was a pretty special moment for me. We were pretty young, but we had our shit dialed when we got there.  We booked seven days but finished in five. I was nervous as fuck when I met him. It almost didn't happen though. Our van started acting funny about 50 miles away from Salem. It was sputtering like crazy. We had to do 30 mph for that last 50 miles.  

As for his temperament, I wouldn't say that he was brutal, but he was definitely direct. There was a singing part where he said "That sounds like Staind... don't do that." We had a drum fill before the song "At Twilight" and he said "That fill is way too funky for this. We need to address that." My guitar wasn't set up 100% properly, so he grabbed it and went upstairs. All I heard was a saw and a hammer going and he came back down with it and said "That should be better now". It was awesome recording with him though. His studio is beautiful. The quality of his equipment is so amazing, and he knows how to use it.

It was hard to imagine recording with someone else. At least until we met Will and started tracking at Studio 4. The experiences are totally different. I was almost in shock the whole time when we were recording with Kurt. Will is like our buddy that just so happens to be amazing at what he does while having this level of experience and know how that rivals people that have been producing/engineering for three times as long.  

As for my stuff, Kurt originally gave me the advice "It's better to have a couple really awesome pieces of recording gear as opposed to a lot of mediocre pieces".  Will also encouraged me to track the vocals for our record.  So it's hard not to take the advice from two people you really admire.

When you guys played Detroit a couple summers ago you were already well into work on the new LP...at that point I remember you guys telling me there had already been some push and pull about the direction of your new material. Just over a year later the record is done, musically at least. What did the writing process look like, and was there anything you wanted to do differently from the past couple 7 inches and the Colony split?

I was writing these huge, layered songs at that point.  Keep in mind we are one guitar and one bass player. In my head, these songs sounded so good, but for us to pull them off, we would need at least two other guitar players. I would say we have tossed maybe 15 songs during this process. After all that, our drummer Vic and I would go to the studio and just play. Anything that didn’t sound good with just the two of us was tossed.  We would record ourselves playing for 20 minutes and listen to whatever was there. It had to be interesting with one guitar and drums, otherwise it was too much.  So everything was stripped down to its bare bones.  

The process was definitely different for this record compared to anything else we have done in the past. Vic was a big part in writing some of these songs.  It was way more of a collective effort. For me, that was really awesome. It put me in a space that I didn’t feel 100% comfortable in, but I had to trust the other people that I have been playing with for years. I think the end result of us coming together to write a record is better than anything I could have done all on my own.

Your sound is already massive as it is so I almost can't imagine you guys adding another member, but given your instincts to write more textured stuff this last go around as well as how successful you feel the more collaborative approach was, can you see yourselves potentially adding a second guitar player at any point or do you think you'll remain a 4 piece moving forward?

No, I don't think we will ever do that. It's not necessary. I already mimic the two guitar player sound by cutting out amps and doing the quiet/loud thing within our songs, but I also feel that if a song doesn't sound right with just one guitar, then adding another over it won't make it great. I am speaking about our band explicitly. The song writing process with one guitar is so much easier too. If we are working on an idea and it sucks, we know right away. Sometimes it's easy to get lost in a riff with a bunch of fluff over it. With one guitar, if the riff sucks, it is so evident.

Also, I think the collaborative approach worked because of the familiarity between Vic and me. We have been playing together for years now. We know each others’ strengths and limitations. Because of that we worked pretty well together on these songs. I feel like it's easy to fuck up that creative flow by bringing in another element.  Who knows though? We started out as a two guitar player tech band and now I hold out chords in the same amount of time that we used to play seven different riffs. I had this idea a while back of us doing a split with another band that was comprised of all of us but played these spacey kind of songs I had written a few years ago. Maybe there could be two guitar players on that.

I am probably the least knowledgeable person about gear in all of North America, but I've noticed you seem to have quite the thing for the work of the Electric Guitar Company. Why have they become the axe of choice for you and what do they bring to the table that other guitars don't?  

I take a lot of pride in the way my guitar sounds.  Years of trial and error have brought me to a point where I am as close to completely happy as I will ever get, as far as the amps/cabs go at least.  My girlfriend first sparked my interest in aluminum guitars.  She has an old Kramer bass with an aluminum neck.  It is such a sick bass.  So I started looking at some companies that make all aluminum guitars.  I ended up talking to the owner of Electrical Guitar Company for a bit about guitars and their process.  We spoke back and forth for about a month before anything was set in stone.  I gave him the specs on the guitar I wanted, and they started building it.  The necks are solid aluminum, so they are able to make them extremely thin while keeping the structural integrity intact. The body is also made of aluminum, but it is hollow.  There are two pieces that are bolted together to form it.  The neck extends through the body, and they mount the pickups to that section of the neck that is inside the body.  By doing that, the guitar resonates unlike any other guitar I have played.  The feedback is beautiful.  They are hands down the easiest guitars to play. After I received the guitar, I started selling most of my wood guitars to get another one. EGC is going to turn into an enormous company in the next few years, and their guitars definitely represent that.  

You've done the last couple releases, as well as the new LP in Philadelphia at Studio 4 with Will Yip. I keep hearing incredible things about the dude and just read a cool feature on him today that Blow the Scene did; he definitely seems like a great guy to work with. What was the studio experience like with him this time around? Were there any new tricks that either he or you guys had up your sleeves?

So I was introduced to Will from a mutual friend.  He recorded and mixed the songs we did for the Colony split and our White 7 inch.  For this LP, it was our 4th time recording with him.  We were there two other times to record songs that we never used for anything.  Will is the best.  It is so easy to record with him. 

The hardest decision we had to make was what to have for lunch each day.  Maybe it’s because we have a rapport with him now, but we go in and take care of business.  We recorded guitar, bass, and drums in four days.  The only way we were able to do that was because of his efficiency.  We tracked all the music with him, but we are in the process of tracking the vocals on Long Island with my stuff.  Logistically and financially, it makes more sense to do the vocals on our own time. 

For this record, we brought five amps and three cabinets of our own while using a few different amp/cabs that are at Studio 4.  The guitar tracks consist of an Acoustic 450 through an Acoustic 405 cabinet, a 73 Orange OR120 through a HIWATT cabinet, a White Electric Amp through an old Marshall cabinet, the Orange through another Marshall cabinet, and an old Vox 2x12.  For the bass we used an Ampeg fliptop with an 18 inch speaker and a VHT guitar amp to make it sound disgusting.  We used their drums which is a setup of old Ludwig’s and some other stuff.  The tonal possibilities are almost endless when playing these setups in their live room.  That is one of the keys to that huge sound.  Their live room is perfect.  The way it was built and mic’d creates this enormous sound that cannot be recreated digitally.  The other key is the console.  They have a vintage Neve console.  If you have seen the flick that Dave Grohl put together about Sound City, it’s the same console but with more tracks and an expanded EQ I believe.  

For a band like ours to be able to track our stupid songs through a piece of history like that is beyond words.  I am forever grateful to Will for being such a good dude and opening up that studio to bands like ours.  Will is mixing and mastering this record, so to say that I am excited to hear the final product would be a gargantuan understatement.

Alright Chris, so take us down memory lane....how did you fall into punk and hardcore? What were some of your first shows, first bands you fell in love with, first records you got your hands on?

My father's record collection was probably where I first started to discover bands like Black Sabbath, Santana, the Beatles, etc. and I listened to those mostly when I was growing up. When I was about 12 or 13 a group of friends would all hang out after school. Some of us would skate, some would cause trouble but whatever it was that we were doing, we always had a cassette playing on a boom box. It started off being metal and then alternative and then gradually progressed to punk and hardcore. We heard about bands through magazines like Thrasher and skate videos mostly. We would go to local record stores to see if they had any of it. Sometimes we got lucky and we'd find a Minor Threat 12" or Dead Milkmen 12"s, other times we had to go to the city to get what we wanted. Eventually we started hearing about local shows and some of the venues which happened to be a few towns over from us. Most of the bands we were exposed to were local Long Island bands like Mind Over Matter, Neglect, Silent Majority, etc. Through local distro's, zines and friends, I began to find get into bands like Lincoln, Indian Summer, Inkwell, Frail and other bands of that style.

I honestly kind of missed the boat on Skycamefalling....saw you guys in Chicago once, but it was One Day Savior when I really came to admire your early work. You had such a solid run and built up an incredibly diverse roster, both sonically and philosophically. When you think back on ODS, what are you most proud of? Was there anything left on the shelf that you wish you would've released at the end that got passed on due to circumstances? 

First, thank you for the kind words. The label was, for the most part, something I enjoyed doing and I look back on it with incredibly fond memories. My taste has always been diverse and I think that led to some very confused listeners. I looked up to labels like Immigrant Sun, Art Monk Construction and Watermark so I did my best to copy a lot of what they were doing. The music always sounded different, which is what I loved about those labels. I bought their records because it came out on their label and I never really knew what the sound would be when you pressed play.

I remember the first 7" I ever released, the split between Incision and Ignorance Never Settles, and the day those showed up to my door. Assembling them was probably one of the happiest moments I can remember. Just the fact that two bands let me release their music and it would one day end up in the hands of people who discovered new music the very same way that I did. In the end, I saw it winding down, so there were a few vinyl releases that I had to pass on after having agreed to release them which was a bit of a bummer.

Speaking of labels, Divider released a somewhat delay-plagued 3 way split LP with Bone Dance and Plebeian Grandstand which was quickly followed by two d.i.y. releases, a split 7" with Colony and then your own 3-song 7". When we chatted a couple summers ago you expressed being pretty content with going the d.i.y. route...what eventually led to the partnership with Glory Kid for the release of the new LP?

It’s always just been easier for us to control our own records and do things at our own pace. The split LP was agreed on before I was in the band and there were certainly delay's on the band's part with respect to recording. It’s not that we weren't grateful because after all this is someone who was willing to spend their hard earned money to release music for a band. After that one release and the headaches and delays which accompanied it, it made more sense for us to do things on our own. Given the fact of where we are in our lives and with this band, for us to be able to decide what to do and when, seemed the most appropriate. Glory Kid seemed to be on the same page with all of that and he understands our current situation surrounding our personal lives, timelines, etc. He has been more than patient throughout this project and it’s greatly appreciated.

The lyrics to "A-Tune" sort of seem like a critique of media with lines like "the act of us all on our knees, it echoes from our homes, from our children, from our nine to non-stop of tuning in". Just curious if you could flesh this out a little more. It seems to me that while the media currently still serves to pacify to a large extent, the advent of social media also presents unprecedented opportunities for social movements to flourish. Do you see these tendencies, and if so, which do you see as more prevalent?

To be completely honest, I am on the fence with a lot of what is going on when it comes to the media, social networking and data collection. I work in an industry where data collection is looked as less an invasion of privacy and more as a way to tailor the information that is being delivered to you and make it relevant. I am indeed guilt of being one of those individuals that has a hard time turning off from my digital life. Yet through that, I am also cautious around what I post and what side of me is on display. 

The lyrics themselves are about how specific applications that we perceive as private are really just ways for businesses to gain our trust, let our guard down and open ourselves up to a constant stream of advertising which in turn effects what we consider successful or beautiful or even happiness. Someone is always selling us and it’s hard to understand, especially for younger people who have grown up in this environment, what is actually the ideals that we ourselves believe and what are the ones that we have been told to believe. 

It’s frustrating because I often find myself caught between these two worlds, of what I believe I need to be happy and what I actually need. I do believe that the media and the digital era has truly opened up a new world for many us and allowed us to find information and present it in such a way that was not available to us. Connecting people who have similar or even different ideas and allow meaningful dialogue and perhaps promote change. 

On the one hand, I do believe that there are negative aspects which occur with every new means of communication. It’s a cat and mouse game to a degree however for most of us settling somewhere in the middle, I think we are most likely willing to accept the negative portions in exchange for the positive ones. 

The over-arching theme lyrically seems to be a profound sense of hopelessness and desperation. Where does this come from for you? While I think those sorts of emotions certainly fit the mood of Dividers music, you've always struck me as a pretty upbeat guy for the most part. 

I have gone through some shit in the last few years and my outlet has always been writing and music. While I consider myself fairly upbeat in my day to day life, the weight of the issues I have faced in recent years has certainly taken a toll. Fortunately the band and the being able to play shows have given me a place to exercise those demons. There have certainly been those days where I did not think that I or my family could get through some of the challenges and it seems those days where my outlook is at its lowest seem to the ones where I can be the most creative. I do not feel sorry for myself or the things that I have gone through. I look at all of this as a learning experience, a way to better myself and my life. I accept what we have gone through and consider myself very fortunate to be able to put a lot of that behind us and move forward.

The last time we chatted you said we had to talk 90s hardcore, so this is it. What were some of your favorite labels from the mid to late 90s?

The ones I mentioned earlier, Immigrant Sun, Watermark & Art Monk, were favorites of mine in addition to labels like Second Nature, Hydra Head, (early) Doghouse, King of the Monsters and Youth Power. Most of those labels were pretty eclectic in their releases and genres and many of them had pretty incredible packaging as well. I believe you and I chatted about that Jeremin record on KOTM and even some of the early Hydra Head and Immigrant Sun records had amazing packaging. Judging a record by its cover and the effort put into the packaging and artwork was how I discovered many of my favorite bands years ago. 

Imagine you had to curate the equivalent of Burning Fight but instead of getting all the legends that everyone knows like Unbroken, Trial, and 108, it would be smaller bands that have mostly fallen to the dustbin of history. Who plays the fest and why?

I think I might be the only in attendance for this fest. There was a band I loved from Connecticut called In Vain that has virtually gone unnoticed and forgotten about it. I always thought they were way ahead of their time and unfortunately never received the recognition they deserved. Next, Midvale who had a record on Status and another on Ed Walters. The vocalist of that band had such a powerful and emotional voice. I am going to also say New Day Rising, who in my opinion were the pioneers of that sing/scream style and the modern “screamo” sound today. Cable playing only “Variable Speed Drive”, which when I saw them in the late 90s were probably the most intense band I had ever seen. Groundwork, who somehow has fallen through the cracks but yet were largely influential in their day. Acme, which might cost us a lot to fly them over from Europe, but anyone who heard that record won’t argue with my decision on that one. We need a headliner so I am saying Falling Forward, those songs are so raw and they might be the popular band on the list. I can’t deny getting the chills when listening to “Hand Me Down”. I also forgot Creation is Crucifixion, the tech metal band before that tech sound was cool.

     

Interview with Tom Schlatter from Capacities (and a million other amazing bands)

I first met Tom Schlatter way back in the day when I lived in Grand Rapids. My friend Yann used to book all the good shows in GR and his preference was for bands of the more d.i.y., screamy, Ebullition style. The first time he had The Assistant through I was completely blown away, not just by their chops (which were indeed ridiculous), but also by the honesty and humility that came through in their performance and records (well, CD’s, haha). They came through Grand Rapids once more and I got to see them out in Jersey once because Steph was living there at the time. Needless to say, when they broke up I definitely sought out anything with Tom’s name on it (yes, I discovered You and I AFTER The Assistant, I pose, I pose).

Thankfully, there’s been tons of it, as the guy forms bands that put out incredible records at an absolutely dizzying pace. I was lucky enough to play with and see Black Kites a few summers back when they brought Zann over from Germany, and had the privilege of booking Capacities this past Spring on their run with Coma Regalia.

Throughout all this, I’ve always been impressed by his musicianship of course, but also by just how kind and thoughtful the guy is. When I think of people doing d.i.y. hardcore and punk the right way, Tom is one of the first people that comes to my mind.      

I'm curious to hear a little bit about your childhood, your family, and how you eventually discovered, stumbled upon, or were introduced to punk and hardcore.

I grew up in a New Jersey suburb located about 10 miles from the beach. My family moved down there a month before I was born. Mom taught high school and Dad operated a crane as part of the construction union. My dad was an extremely bi polar and impatient person. It wasn't fun growing up with him. I had two brothers and a sister but we never really had the chance to forge any real bonds because I think everyone was always in survival mode around my dad.

I started skateboarding when I was about 8 or 9 years old. It was excellent and gave me some sort of outlet that helped me establish independence. Thrasher magazine always had ads for bands like Bad Religion, Suicidal Tendencies, etc., so the names of these bands became familiar. I had this friend, Ray, who had an older brother who listened to Minor Threat and Uniform Choice. The stuff was like pure gold to me.

What were some of your earliest experiences in the scene; shows, bands, people, and venues you first fell in love with and/or were captivated by?

Throughout middle school and early high school I was playing guitar in alternative rock bands. This was probably around 1992 or so, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were huge at the time. I played small house parties or VFW halls once in a while. By my sophomore year of high school I had gravitated exclusively to punk and hardcore. There were some older kids in town who had a house that was doing shows. They called it the 508 house (it was on 508 Main Street). My first show there was seeing Franklin, Fracture and Rye. Still Life played later on in the night, but being so young I had to get home before curfew.

The show blew my mind though; so many people tightly packed into this hot basement, swaying back and forth to the bands...it was something I hadn't seen yet. This wasn't a house party or large rock concert, this was a show. The focus was on the music and the musicians seemed to play extra hard in appreciation. From that point on I knew that this was the format in which I wanted to experience music.

I went back to that house for multiple shows. Grain, Hose Got Cable, Harriet the Spy, Floodgate, Endeavor...some bands were better than others, but it was always a really grounded way to experience music.

Once you went to one show it was easy to find out about others. Remember, this was before the internet. You had to attend shows to find out about others. Before I knew it I was hitching rides around New Jersey to small basement shows, meeting new friends and having new experiences.

At what point did you transition from playing in alternative bands to punk and hardcore stuff, and how was that experience different for you?

A lot of people talk about Nirvana as being this huge, bigger-than-life band. But to me it was a very different experience. When Nirvana became mainstream the musical landscape of MTV was a lot of hair metal and rock star caricature. Nirvana was a band that looked like my friends and I; their musical ability (straight forward songs, easy guitar parts) was very similar to ours and therefore it was easy to learn and play those songs. It was a less tangible experience than going to shows at the 508 years later, but nonetheless, it did make playing in a band look as though it was something that could be more accessible.

When I started listening to the Misfits, Black Flag, and Minor Threat it became apparent that those songs were even easier to play. On deeper investigation it also seemed that all those bands were forgoing the larger music industry and just putting their records out themselves. It added another level of tangibility and control to the music. It appeared much more grounded and realistic to me.

The last straw was within the lyrical content of punk and hardcore as opposed to alternative music. Bands like Shelter, Endpoint, 108, Bad Religion, Fugazi, etc. had lyrics that seemed to take issues and stances head on. There was no abstraction or haziness to it. It was something that made you feel angry and aware. It was that last link I was looking for in music.

Talk a little bit about the formation of You and I, and the growth of the band into one of the more renowned screamo pioneers of the 90's.

We started You and I in the summer before my Senior year of High School. Justin, Jon and I had been previously playing in a band called Instil. We did a 7" and a split LP with Instil before the band fell apart. The three of us seemed to have a shared vision of doing another band that incorporated a ton of different influences. It wasn't being done much back then; the closest thing I could think of was the early Converge and Cave In material or the Reach Out side of their split with Honeywell. All that stuff was really appealing to me. The Endeavor "Of Equality" record was also something that just really blew my mind.

I wanted to challenge myself to write more interesting and varied material. Sure, we listened to One Eye God Prophecy and Reversal of Man, but at that time no one was using the term "screamo". It was all just DIY hardcore and punk. The three of us played with a few drummers and a couple different second guitar players before the more long term line up with Casey and Chris was established.

We just kept writing songs and playing shows. We were all in our late teens/early twenties, trapped in our little bubbles of self-absorbed life. It made for some very tense situations and resulted in music that was pretty raw and uncaring about how vulnerable it would come across to other people.

As we got older though, we all gradually grew out of the more chaotic and self-involved aspects of our lives. We were establishing healthy relationships, graduating college, just basically moving past all the catharsis that the band had originally involved. I don't want to say we "outgrew" the band, but it had definitely run its course and provided what it needed to provide for a specific time in our lives.

The whole "screamo" thing seemed to start after we called it quits. I remember once EBay and Skylab became a normal way to buy records and seeing our LP go for $120. It was strange. People seemed to associate us with this whole white belt/weird haircut screamo thing that we really knew nothing about. If you look at old pictures of us we look like a bunch of boys in thrift store clothes and proper haircuts.

If You and I's stuff was challenging and drew from multiple influences, it seems like The Assistant pushed that bar forward even more so, pairing Dillinger Escape Plan-esque technicality in some songs, with more straight forward punk songs and even dare I say a ballad here or there, haha. I saw you guys (and gal) a couple times as a 5 piece, and then once as a 3 piece. What would you say were some of the highlights of The Assistant and what eventually caused things to fall apart?

Yes, with The Assistant we definitely tried to push the technical aspects as well as try to jam every style together. A few months ago I listened back to some of that stuff and it's just so dense with technicality and changes. The songs are so long and just go every which way. At the time I think I was really fulfilled by playing it, but some of those songs are extremely tough for me to listen to, probably because it's so contrary to my writing style now.

Doing the band as a 3 piece for that short time was extremely stressful and was pretty much done due to my stubborn personality of not wanting to give up. I had booked a 45 day tour all by myself and about two months before tour our bassist and second guitar player left the band. In addition, our drummer's father was killed that Spring and the court trial for the drunk driver who killed him was going to be happening in the middle of the tour. The three of us made it all work though. I maxed out my credit card buying pedals and borrowed amps. Our drummer went home in the middle of tour to attend the trial and we played a few shows as an acoustic duo (which was totally weird) until he returned. It was one of the better tours I had ever done though and I'm glad we did it. Learning to play through 3 amps would later come in handy and I sort of embraced it for a while after when I was playing in This Ship Will Sink and Black Kites.

The issue with The Assistant was always me pushing the band to do more than they wanted to. My life was a mess back then and I was totally retreating into music as a coping mechanism. I would get super intense about it and want to play every single show we were offered, doing every tour we could, every release we could, etc. A good deal of that band was me pushing the other members to do more while they resisted. It wasn't a good situation. The band eventually fell apart when Ross, our drummer, got heavily into his profession of being a vegan chef. It got to the point where he was only available one day a week and we had to base everything around that. It was an impossible situation and couldn't really work. Ross now owns and operates his own vegan restaurant called Sprig and Vine. The place is amazing.

I don't want this thing to become too much of a talk about this band, and then this band, haha so let me move onto more generalized territory. Since The Assistant you've done In First Person, Black Kites, now Capacities, and probably a couple I don't know about (was there an Infidel in there somewhere???). All these bands while stylistically somewhat different are all super chaotic, aggressive, etc. While it seems that most people who stick around in d.i.y./punk/hardcore circles for a long while sort of mellow out over time, your material has continued to be just as intense, if not gotten more intense over time. Why do you think that is and what does it say about your personality, your experiences transitioning from teen to adult, etc.?

Writing music for me was always an outlet for stress, anger, etc. so I think the result of that is naturally an aggressive style. I'd rather sit down and write ten angry songs than walk around with a bunch of pent up frustration. What it probably says about my personality is that I've made a conscious decision to direct frustration into creative and productive outlets. It's something to be extremely thankful for. I have thoughts of someday doing an instrumental post rock band or perhaps a 3 piece Jawbreaker influenced band, but none of those things have come to pass yet. I'm not totally opposed to playing a more subdued form of music; let's be honest, no one is angry all the time. Even more so, subdued music can sometimes hold the same passion and anger that aggressive music does, it's just a bit tougher to translate it properly (I think "The Impossible Leap in Ten Easy Steps" by From Monument to Masses does this amazingly). I started working on a project with my friend, Steve Roche, which is highly influenced by Embrace, Please Inform The Captain This is a Hijack, Bullets In, etc. Right now it's just a studio project that we've recorded 4 songs so far with. We'll see where it goes.

Connecting to that question of sonic consistency, lyrically all your projects seem to couple personal issues with various political and ethical topics. Almost paralleling how many people mellow out sonically, they also seem to mellow out politically or float over into "i-just-don’t-give-a-fuck-anymore" cynicism/nihilism. What keeps you committed to pushing against the status quo and trying to use music as a vehicle to open people's eyes about various topics?

This is interesting. It's pretty personal I guess. There are issues that I care about and as I've gotten older they only become more complex with more grey area than I maybe once had realized. It's a constant learning experience and I can't picture a life where I didn't take on some awareness. There's definitely times I take myself out of the conversation though. At times people would probably paint me as more conservative, particularly when there is the use of identity politics or cultural relativity to justify a point of view. I have no patience for it, whereas, at a younger age I may have.

Using music to express these things is just sort of a natural extension of what I was saying before. If you're angry about something it can feel good to apply that anger to something creative. If it gets people thinking then that's great. If it affects no one at all it still allows me to sort out my thoughts on a topic and clearly express them. There's no harm in that, in fact it's pretty healthy.

I'm glad you brought up Steve. I don't know him at all but I know a little about some of his bands and have always noticed your bands almost always record with him. Bands often talk about producers being an extra member or whatever and while you've had so many bands I doubt that type of relationship has existed with all members, I would certainly imagine you guys have a certain chemistry. What does he bring to the table as an engineer that keeps you coming back to him?

I met Steve back in 1998 when he was playing bass for Saetia. He was homeless and couch crashing, but surprisingly clean and very articulate for someone who was living such a nomadic lifestyle. From the start I was really into his down to earth personality and ability to hear people out on any situation. He was doing a radio show for WNYU at the time and had bands come do live sets on the air. You and I did a live set that he recorded to an 8 track tape machine. He started using that studio to record bands on a regular basis, most of the time for free. He didn't pay any rent on the room and I think he just wanted to get some experience under his belt. The Assistant recorded there a couple times.

I kept recording with him as he moved from studio to studio, accumulated more gear and got more of an ear for how to pick up sounds. Steve knows me, he knows my bands, he knows the style of music that I play. There's really no better way to go into a recording process than that. It cuts out a lot of the explaining you'd normally have to do with a recording engineer. He's also an extremely apt musician; he knows when things need to be redone and when you could go back and do it better.

Steve never really takes on a "producer" role, as he pretty much lets the band do their thing and doesn't seem to interfere much in any of the song writing per say. But he does add to establishing a vision for how the record will sound and feel. Right off the bat he has a good ear for coming up with similar records that project the same feel you're going for and he'll work to achieve that.

The Black Kites "Advancement to Ruins" LP and the Manalive "Pistol to the Head of the Modern Man" material that I played on were recorded by Chris Ross in his home studio. It was a similar experience to record with Chris because he's also a guy who's been playing in hardcore bands for years and understands your approach and influences. I didn't have the history with Chris that I have with Steve, and at the time of the Black Kites recording Chris was still establishing his studio, so it was different in those respects. We were one of the first bands to record there. He did the record in exchange for some pizza.

Recording for free, recording for pizza!? Damn I am doing it all wrong, haha. So anyway, your "main" project these days seems to be Capacities, which not only sees you playing bass rather than guitar, but which I also imagine is more collaborative in terms of the writing process than say Black Kites where you were the only guitar player. Do you, Rob and Eric write separately and bring stuff to the table or is it more a "let's jam and see what happens" kind of a thing?

By the time Black Kites ended and Capacities began I was very happy to no longer be the primary song writer of a band anymore. I was happy to only be playing out of one amp as well. Bass is the instrument that I now feel most comfortable with and I don't really think I'd ever feel comfortable playing guitar in a band again. I think all those years I was playing guitar through multiple amps, I really just wanted to secretly play bass.

With Capacities I still write songs on guitar and then bring them to the rest of the band, but it's a different feel than performing them live on guitar. Most of the Capacities writing is done with Eric, Rob or I bringing full songs that are done to the band and then working them/reworking them so that they're to the point where we're all happy with it. Sometimes we'll just have one part and we piggyback onto it from there as well, but that doesn't happen as often. The only time we ever just jammed to write a song was for a 7 minute instrumental song called "Sons of a Silent Age". Basically Eric and Rob jammed off each other and Chris and I backed it up with drums and bass that would change every 16 measures and get more intense. It was a cool experience and sort of fulfilled that dream of playing in an instrumental post punk band for a second.

So it's obviously been a busy year, you guys put out the 10" and did a small run in the Spring, then went out West a little while ago for some shows, and recorded for an upcoming 4 way LP. What's coming up next and where do you see Capacities headed in the future?

Capacities started out as Eric and Rob getting this idea to do a band. What it's turned into is four guys who just really like hanging out and travelling with each other. We appear to do a lot and I guess, compared to most bands, we've achieved quite a bit in a short time. Our weekend trips, tours, etc., they're like mini vacations. We never just drive to the show, play, sleep, drive to the show, play, sleep....we always make time to go sightseeing, see old friends, find the interesting small businesses, search out good food, etc. Our personalities seem to all feed off each other too, so it's easy to go from just joking around to having some serious conversation. It makes touring and being in a band a lot more than just touring and being in a band (that sounds weird, I know). It's really an extension of the relationship that the four of us have with each other.

The 4 way LP should be out very soon. We've started writing a new batch of songs recently for some records we have in mind. We're messing around with these songs and incorporating some different styles so we'll see where it goes. I'd like to make our way back to the Midwest again soon though. That tour was so much fun. California was great too. We have the folks in Itto to thank for making that dream come true.

So I've been asking this to a lot of people lately, but as someone who has been around for pushing two decades now, what have been the most significant changes you've seen in hardcore and punk, whether those things are for the better or for the worse?

Off the top of my head: The internet has made music sharing, touring and overall communication less expensive and easier. There are pros and cons to this. The pros being things like I'm not paying a long distance bill to book a tour and someone half way across the world can hear our new songs the day that we release them. The cons are that everyone wants to tour now, everyone uploads their music and everyone can market themselves as way more impressive that they might actually be.

For a while there in the mid 2000's there was a severe lack of political commentary in hardcore. It seems to be coming back now and there are pros and cons to that too. The pros being that people are being exposed to different issues and perspectives. The cons being that interaction doesn't take place in person anymore, it's mostly over social media outlets or message boards. This often stifles the conversation down to assumptions and accusations in situations that need to be more fully explored in person.

Last year when Great Rev went to Chicago and we all met him for the first time, Zibutis told me you had started up a project with Rob Fish. Please tell me this is real and that the results will be gracing my ears sometime soon!

I met Rob a few years ago when Black Kites played with 108 in Brooklyn. 108 is one of my favorite bands and meeting Rob, becoming friends with him, was really great. He's a super nice, approachable guy that has a great honesty about him. He sent me a message shortly after that show and said we should do some songs together. I recorded 4 songs with Steve Roche on drums. The music was pretty technical, heavy and intense. I recently got a message from Rob saying that he tried many times but couldn't really land anything on the songs that he was happy with. Steve and I may very well take the songs to another vocalist and see if we can do something with them (perhaps Brendan DeSmet of Groundwork/Absinthe fame), or they may just sit on my computer doing nothing. Not sure.

Two final questions....You've contributed to quite a massive body of work with your various bands over the years....if it's possible, what would you say is the release you are most proud of or best exemplifies your vision of punk, hardcore, and d.i.y.?

It would be tough to choose one release. It's hard to say because each release was done at a different time of my life and was relevant to how I felt and what I wanted to achieve at that time. Off the top of my head the ones that pretty much express where I was at the moment, whether they be musically or lyrically are: You and I - 7" The Assistant - Song from the 3 way split with Takaru and This Ship Will Sink. This Ship Will Sink - S/T In First Person - “Lost Between Hands Held Tight”, Black Kites – “Songs Written While Things Were Changing”, Capacities - Everything we've done so far.

Lastly, you don't strike me as the kind of guy who would think about your "legacy" so to speak, but I'm kind of curious to hear what you want it to be; what you hope people would remember about your contributions over the years.

I didn't really think about it much until recently when I said something like "one day years from now someone will mistakenly click on an mp3 and hear my voice screaming...I take comfort in that". I'm not so much curious about what people would remember about me, but more interested in the fact that music, as a form of documentation, allows you to live on in some way after you're gone. Sort of a documentation that you once existed.